Hosea 11:8-11

The prophet cannot believe in a final rejection of Israel (comp. Hosea 13:14). He speaks as if Jehovah had at first contemplated this. Evidently there was a conflict in his own mind between the ideas of justice and love. Justice seemed to demand that all relations between Jehovah and Israel should be broken off; love remonstrated with the assurance of its undecayed healing faculty (Hosea 14:4). Both justice and love were divine; hence it seemed that there must be a conflict even in the mind of Jehovah. Let us not however presume to deduce a -doctrine" from Hosea's description of his mental mood. His final intuition alone is his legacy to the Church; not the inward struggle out of which he triumphantly emerged.